


Into Shadows, Part 6

by skyblue_reverie



Series: Into Shadows [6]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 00:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20591867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyblue_reverie/pseuds/skyblue_reverie
Summary: My take on Into Darkness, slightly less dark and with 11 billionty times more Pike and McCoy.This part: Khan and Admiral Marcus, dun dun DUN."My name is… Khan.”  He announced this impressively, almost triumphantly, as if Jim should immediately know who he was and tremble in fear or something.





	Into Shadows, Part 6

Jim smirked at Pike when he caught up with him in front of the turbolift. He’d obviously been making out with Bones. “Might want to smooth down your hair, sir. Looks like it got a little… ruffled.”

Pike finger-combed his hair and shot Jim back a smirk of his own, but when he spoke he was all business. “You’ve already spoken with the prisoner, developed some level of rapport,” he said. “I’d like you to take the lead on the interrogation. I’ll step in if necessary, but otherwise this is your show, Jim.”

Jim nodded. When they entered the security area, he stepped up to the cell’s forcefield. “Why is there a man in that torpedo?” he demanded without preamble. No point wasting time on preliminaries.

The prisoner was sitting on the cell’s bench, and met Jim’s eyes calmly. “There are men and women in all those torpedoes, Commander. I put them there.”

Jim and Chris exchanged a look, and then Jim asked, “Who the hell are you?”

There was a long beat of silence before the man responded. “A remnant of a time long past. Genetically engineered to be superior so as to lead others to peace in a world at war. But we were condemned as criminals, forced into exile. For centuries we slept, hoping when we awoke things would be different. But as a result of the destruction of Vulcan, your Starfleet began to aggressively search distant quadrants of space. My ship was found adrift. I alone was revived.”

Well, that matched up with what Bones and Dr. Marcus had found, even if put a little melodramatically. Jim pressed, “I looked up John Harrison. Until a year ago, he didn't exist.”

The man rose from the bench, speaking impatiently now. “John Harrison was a fiction created the moment I was awoken by your Admiral Marcus to help him advance his cause. A smokescreen to conceal my true identity. My name is… Khan.” He announced this impressively, almost triumphantly, as if Jim should immediately know who he was and tremble in fear or something.

“Why would a Starfleet admiral ask a three-hundred-year-old _frozen_ man for help?” Jim made sure his incredulity came through. This guy obviously took himself way too seriously, and poking his dignity was the most likely way to get a reaction, to get him to say more than he meant to say.

“Because I am _better_,” the man – Khan – said, a simple, albeit arrogant, statement of fact.

“At what?” Jim asked, prodding again, adding extra skepticism to his voice.

“Everything. Alexander Marcus needed to respond to an uncivilized threat in a civilized time, and for that he needed a warrior's mind - _my_ mind - to design weapons and warships.”

Now Chris broke in. “You are suggesting the admiral violated every regulation he vowed to uphold because he wanted to exploit your… intellect.” Chris had obviously picked up on his tactic and added a healthy dose of skepticism to his own voice.

“He wanted to exploit my _savagery_. Intellect alone is useless in a fight, Captain. If you can't even break a rule, how would you be expected to break bone? Marcus used me to design weapons, to help him realize his vision of a militarized Starfleet. He sent you to use those weapons. To fire my torpedoes on an unsuspecting planet. And then he purposely crippled your ship in enemy space, leading to one inevitable outcome. The Klingons would come searching for whomever was responsible, and you would have no chance of escape. Marcus would finally have the war he talked about. The war he always wanted.”

Chris spoke harshly, dropping the games. “No. No. I’ve known Admiral Marcus for more than thirty years. He’s a good man. You, on the other hand – you took 42 lives when you destroyed Section 31. You are a murderer, and you took an innocent woman hostage.”

Khan had started shaking his head, and he turned away from them now, his voice rising in what sounded like genuine anguish. “Marcus took my crew from me. He used my friends to control me. I tried to smuggle them to safety by concealing them in the very weapons I had designed, but I was discovered. I had no choice but to escape alone. And when I did, I had every reason to suspect that Marcus had killed _every single one_ of the people I hold most dear. So I responded in kind. I tried to kill him, but when that option was removed, I took the one person that _he_ held most dear. My crew is my family, Captain. ls there anything you would not do for your family?” He turned around, a tear tracing down his cheek, and locked eyes with Pike. Jim was a little shaken, despite himself. This guy was _good_.

Then Sulu’s voice interrupted them, broadcasting into the room from the bridge. “Proximity alert, sir. There's a ship at warp heading right for us.”

“Klingons?” Jim asked Sulu.

Khan scoffed. “At warp? No, Kirk. We both know who it is. As do you,” he said, still looking straight at Pike.

Sulu responded to Jim’s query, not having heard Khan. “l don't think so. It's not coming at us from Qo'noS.”

Not looking away from Khan, Pike gritted out an order to the security officer on duty. “Lieutenant, move the prisoner to med bay. Post six security officers on him.”

Without waiting for an answer, Pike turned and began striding away. “Kirk, you’re with me.” Jim nodded and followed.

“Captain on the bridge,” Sulu announced when they exited the turbolift.

“ETA of the incoming ship,” rapped out Pike.

Sulu responded. “Three seconds, sir.”

Pike settled himself firmly in the captain’s chair. “Shields.”

“Aye, Captain.”

A mere moment later, a massive black ship, obviously of Federation origin, but with no markings, appeared in front of the Enterprise. It was one of the most disturbing things Jim had ever seen.

“They're hailing us, sir,” said Uhura, grim and focused.

“On screen. Broadcast shipwide, for the record,” Pike responded.

Admiral Marcus’s face appeared on the viewscreen. “Captain Pike,” he said.

Chris spoke evenly. “Admiral Marcus. I wasn't expecting you. That's a hell of a ship you've got there.” Jim had to hand it to Pike – he wasn’t sure he’d be that calm if he’d suddenly been faced with proof that a friend of decades’ standing had betrayed him and everyone else in the Federation. That ship was _wrong_, and the fact that Marcus was captaining it meant that, whether Khan was correct about Marcus’s specific plans or not, he’d obviously broken his oath to Starfleet.

“And I wasn't expecting to get word that you'd taken Harrison into custody in violation of your mission objective,” Marcus returned.

“Well, we were forced to improvise when our warp core unexpectedly malfunctioned. But you already knew that, didn't you, Alex?”

“I don't take your meaning,” Marcus said, and Jim instantly _knew_ that Khan had been telling the exact truth. Marcus had sabotaged their ship, the bastard. He’d been planning to retrieve his daughter first, no doubt, since with her signal-boosting chip he could have beamed her off of the Enterprise from the Federation side of the neutral zone, and then he'd planned to leave the rest of them in Klingon space to die, and start a war in the process. The only reason he was here instead of safely on the right side of the neutral zone was that they'd communicated to Starfleet that they had captured Khan instead of killing him, and now Marcus had to make absolutely sure that they didn't make it back to earth with Khan and reveal Marcus's plans. Meanwhile, as this was racing through his mind, Chris was already responding.

“Well, I assume you’ve come out here to assist with our repairs. Why else would the head of Starfleet personally come to the edge of the Neutral Zone?” Chris’s falsely pleasant tone indicated that he had come to the same conclusion as Jim.

“Captain, they're scanning our ship,” Sulu said quietly.

Chris didn’t acknowledge Sulu directly, but asked Marcus, “ls there something I can help you find, Alex?”

“Where is your prisoner, Chris? And where’s my daughter?”

“Both safe and sound,” Pike said. “Per Starfleet regulation, I'm planning on returning _Khan_ to Earth to stand trial.” The way Pike emphasized Khan’s name made it crystal clear that Pike was calling Marcus on his bullshit.

Marcus’s cold eyes stared back at Pike, but he responded in an almost-casual tone. “Well, shit. You talked to him. This is exactly what I was hoping to spare you from. I took a tactical risk and I woke that bastard up, believing that his superior intelligence could help us protect ourselves from whatever came at us next. But I made a mistake, and now the blood of everybody he's killed is on my hands. So I'm asking you, give him to me so that I can end what I started.” 

Pike sighed, then asked quietly, “And what exactly would you like me to do with the rest of his crew, Alex? Fire them at the Klingons? End seventy-two lives? Start a war in the process?”

Marcus leaned forward, angry now. “_He_ put those people in those torpedoes. And I simply didn't want to burden you with knowing what was inside of them. You saw what this man can do all by himself. Can you imagine what would happen if we woke up the rest of his crew? What else did he tell you? That he's a peacekeeper? He's playing you, Chris, don't you see that? Khan and his crew were condemned to death as war criminals. And now it is our duty to carry out that sentence before anybody else dies because of him. Now, I'm going to ask you again. One last time, Chris. Lower your shields. Tell me where he is.”

There was a long pause before Pike spoke. “He's in engineering. But I'll have him moved to the transporter room.”

“I'll take it from here,” Marcus said, then terminated the transmission.

“Do not drop those shields, Mister Sulu,” Chris ordered.

“Captain, what’s the plan here?” Jim asked. He had faith that Pike wasn’t actually turning over the prisoner, especially since he’d lied about Khan’s location, but he wasn’t sure what Pike was planning.

“I told Marcus we were bringing a fugitive back to Earth. That's what we're going to do,” was all he said. Jim rolled his eyes. Was _he_ this annoyingly mysterious when he was in charge? But Chris was already pressing a button to connect him to engineering. “Mr. Scott, can we warp?”

The response came immediately, in a harried tone. “Sir, if we go to warp, we run the risk of seriously damaging the core.”

“But can we do it?” Pike pressed.

“Aye, but I wouldna advise it, Captain.”

“Noted. Mr. Sulu, set course for Earth.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sulu.

“Punch it,” Pike said grimly.

A few minutes later, and the Enterprise was crippled and defenseless, dealing with a major bulkhead breach, they were still hundreds of thousands of miles from earth, and Carol was running onto the bridge, trying to convince her father to reconsider his actions. Then she was disappearing in a swirl of light as the Admiral beamed her away.

And _then_, Admiral Marcus was pronouncing Christopher Pike a traitor to the Federation. Chris, the most honorable man Jim had ever known. And Chris was begging – _begging_ – for Admiral Marcus to blame him alone and spare the rest of the crew. It was so fucked up, on so many levels.

Marcus just smirked at Pike on the viewscreen. “Well, that’s a helluva speech, Chris. But if it’s any consolation, I was never going to spare your crew.” Then, speaking to one of his own crew members, Marcus said, “Fire when – “ and the transmission cut off.

There was utter silence on the bridge. Chris looked at Jim, then at the rest of the crew. Jim could see in his eyes the burden of guilt, the knowledge that they were all going to die. “I’m sorry,” Chris said simply, more somber than Jim had ever heard him. There was another long moment of silence as they all prepared for the end. Jim wished like hell that he could’ve said goodbye to Bones, but there wasn’t time. At least Bones wasn’t on the bridge, was spared the knowledge that death was mere seconds away.

Sulu suddenly sat up straight and spoke. “Their weapons have powered down, Captain.”

Then a familiar voice was coming through onto the bridge, dry and somehow almost prim. “Enterprise, this is Commander Spock. Do you read me?”

Pike whipped around to face the viewscreen. Uhura gasped out loud and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Jim, for his part, sagged in relief. Holy fuck. Spock was on the other ship and had somehow disabled its weapons. At least for the moment, they were safe.


End file.
